It is estimated that approximately 1.2 billion work-hours are lost annually in the U.S. due to downtime of electronic services and networks, the length of an incident, the recovery time required, and the frequency of such an occurrence. Fortunately, investing in out-of-band management can mitigate much of this cost and squandered productivity by providing tools that help reduce the length of outages, accelerate recovery, and provide IT administrators with the oversight to reduce the risk of recurrence.
Out-of-band management provides a way to log into or access one's network devices via a separate network than which the network data ordinarily travels. There are any number of reasons one may desire to access a network in this fashion with security being the most common. Additionally, out-of-band management solutions can provide an alternative means to communicate with network devices on the remote network in order to restore communication capabilities, reboot nonresponsive devices, and tweak configuration parameters.
As noted, one reason for out-of-band management is to allow for emergency access to physically remote devices in the event the primary network becomes unavailable. Out-of-band access provides a special “back door” one may use to troubleshoot the main network. Even still, out-of-band access can be used if an external company, or third party, is managing some or all of one's personal or business network devices. Out-of-band implementation prevents the external company from accessing the data on the network, while still allowing them to access the network devices. Thus, there are numerous benefits and advantages of implementing out-of-band management on a particular network. However, despite its advantages, there is still a number of drawback with the current implementations of the technology.
One traditional out-of-band management method is to connect a modem to the console port of the network device. This methodology has several obvious limitations. It requires that the infrastructure supports a phone line and modem for every device being managed, thereby preventing scalability. Further, it is exceedingly difficult to secure modem lines. In some cases, users will have the modem physically turned off when not in use, but then somebody must be located at the remote site must turn the modem on/off to allow access. Also, modems and phone lines tend to be very slow in terms of data transfer.
Thus, most people are turning to Internet or cellular broadband communications to fulfill out-of-band communication and access needs. While the internet generally provides a wider coverage range, cellular broadband networks are often more economical and mobile and are typically more reliable than, for example, satellite communication under inclement weather conditions. Cellular broadband based out-of-band management solutions can be applied to a wide variety of different types of remote network management applications. Cellular based out-of-band communication lends itself particularly well to almost any remote network application that includes network equipment located in distant, hard-to-reach locations where connection via dial-up or land-line is either impractical or impossible.
However, there is a need to not only offer such a cellular based service, but to also provide access to such a service in any number of locations. Offering cellular out of band management as a cloud service meets these needs. Further, security protocols must be in place to prevent security breaches and loss or theft of information. The present invention and its embodiments meets and exceeds these objectives.